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A Kansas City play shows how virtual reality could help veterans heal from PTSD

A Unicorn Theatre play shares the everyday battles of a person living with post traumatic stress disorder, and how virtual reality could be used as a treatment tool.
Unicorn Theatre
A Unicorn Theatre play shares the everyday battles of a person living with post traumatic stress disorder, and how virtual reality could be used as a treatment tool.

Servicemembers with post-traumatic stress disorder can find healing through re-experiencing traumatic events. A psychologist at a Veterans Affairs hospital and a play at Kansas City's Unicorn Theatre share how virtual reality might help combat veterans overcome the trauma of war.

"Backwards Forwards Back," a play at Kansas City's Unicorn Theatre, takes a deeply personal dive into a soldier's everyday battles with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Struggling to find an effective treatment, the character in the one-person play shows how virtual reality slowly helps a service member cope with PTSD.

The character is "learning how to live in the real world by living in virtual one," playwright Jacqueline Goldfinger said.

Veterans Affairs psychologist Dr. Billy Rutherford told Up To Date that exposure therapy is the gold standard for treating PTSD.

"Talking through and experiencing the emotions and the thoughts and memories on a repeated basis can really have the stress response kind of activate, but then kind of crest over like a wave each time," Rutherford said. "And with practice, that wave becomes less intense. So it opens up your ability to process things a lot more clearly."

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